


citadel sunset

by littleleotas



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Death, Detective Noir, Detectives, F/M, M/M, Multi, Murder, Suicide, The Thin Man AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 16:59:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14835596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleleotas/pseuds/littleleotas
Summary: One-shot for the Tumblr prompt "Detective AU + flirting under fire." Famed detective Thane Krios is decidedly not working the Dahlia Dantius case, and runs into some trouble in the process. (The Thin Man AU.)





	citadel sunset

**Author's Note:**

> Could this be a full-length fic rather than just a drabbly one-shot? Absolutely. Am I going to do it? Probably not.
> 
> Also I hate the title but what can you do.
> 
> Warnings: hanging, suicide, death, murder, lotsa gunfire

“I see.” Thane swirled his highball glass thoughtfully, watching a small vortex of whiskey form in the centre of it. “Cause of death?”

The office door opened slightly and Shepard poked her head around the edge. ‘What is it?’ she mouthed.

Thane pulled a long face. Shepard wrinkled up her nose and pursed her lips.

“I would like to see the scene,” Thane continued over the phone.

Shepard opened the door wider and stepped inside in a whirl of chiffon. She crossed her arms over her torso, tapping a finger on her arm impatiently. Thane angled his body away from her. She side-stepped in front of him again, narrowing her eyes.

“Uh-huh. Of course. Yes, please,” Thane said, turning to his desk to write down an address. “Thanks very much.”

He had hardly placed the phone back on the receiver before Shepard asked, “Well?”

“You remember that case I’m not investigating,” he said, blowing on the ink and fanning the scrap of paper back and forth.

“The murder of that Dantius girl, Dahlia?” Shepard raised an eyebrow. “Of course.”

He folded the paper and put it in his breast pocket. “My top suspect just turned up dead.”

“Well, that was rude of her.”

Thane downed the rest of his whiskey and set the empty glass on his desk. “I’m going to take a look at the scene,” he said, walking around his desk and toward the door.

“I’m coming with you,” Shepard said as she followed him.

“Not in that dress.” He stopped at the coat stand by the door, taking his trenchcoat and hat.

“I’ll change, wait for me,” she said, quickly walking toward the bedroom.

Thane waited for the clacking of her heels on the hallway floor to stop, then followed her and closed the bedroom door behind her, locking it from the outside.

“Hey!” She desperately rattled the doorknob. “Thane, let me out!”

Shepard continued yelling as Thane walked back toward the front door. He placed the key on the table in the hall, put his hat on his head nonchalantly, and walked out.

-

Thane nodded at the officer at the front door of the apartment building that Helena Blake had, until very recently, lived in. The officer tipped his hat as Thane went by and climbed the stairs to the fourth floor.

At first, he thought it odd that he encountered no other officers in the building, neither during the climb nor upon reaching Helena’s apartment. He supposed that an apparent suicide was enough of a closed case that no one felt the need to investigate further—especially the suicide of a known criminal like Helena Blake. The police were likely more relieved than curious.

The apartment was clearly not often occupied: pristine, like a picture in a catalogue. No indentations on the couch or chairs from having been sat in, no rings on the tables from glasses or stains from long-ago food spills. Something glinted in the sunlight as he walked by, and he turned back to the couch. Crouching down, he found a gold statuette, a gaudy Neoclassic nude, lying underneath. He frowned, searching the room. His eye caught the edge of a table in the hallway, and he walked over to it. A round dustless circle about the base of the statuette was visible on the table’s surface.

He continued down the hallway and through the open bedroom door. The body had clearly been moved, lying on the bed with the rope noose still around her neck. He looked up at the ceiling. No fixtures or hooks. He checked the back of the door, finding a nail with a few rope fibres stuck to it. He was surprised the small nail held her weight long enough for her to be found, much less provide enough resistance to asphyxiate her. Something didn’t add up.

He returned to the body, moving the noose to look at her neck. It bore no rope marks, no evidence of strain. He noticed a button on the right side of her collar above the first fastened button. His eyes moved down and found the missed buttonhole—blood visible through the shirt’s gap. 

Thane heard the front door open and several pairs of feet enter the apartment. He flattened himself against the wall behind the door, drawing his pistol. The footsteps stopped. He moved as quietly as he could around the doorway, slinking down the hallway.

He quickly surveyed the living room. Three asari commandos in the dining room, crouching behind the table. Two behind each armchair on either side of the living room, and one assault rifle perched on top of each chair.

He breathed silently, lining up a shot with the wielder of the assault rifle to his right from the dark of the hallway. He gauged the distance between himself and his target, himself and the other side of the hallway, and himself and the door. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was something. He counted down in his head, steadying his aim, and fired a bullet directly through the asari’s head, rolling into the table on the opposite side of the hallway and pulling the table down in front of him for cover before her assault rifle hit the floor.

Bullets flew over his head as he flattened himself to the floor behind the table. He leaned around the end of the table to fire, but his shot missed, and he moved back behind the table quickly. The second assault rifle’s holder stalked over to the table and he nearly laughed at the mistake. At the first sight of the top of her head over the table’s edge, he reached up and grabbed her, tumbling backwards and pinning her to the ground. He punched her with a sickening crunch before she could get her bearings and crawled back up to the table.

The front door banged open again, and Shepard and Garrus walked through in unison, each firing and felling a commando before running across the room and jumping behind the table with Thane.

“Hi, honey,” Shepard said brightly, kissing Thane’s cheek.

“Let me guess,” Thane said, turning to Garrus. “You just couldn’t say no to those puppy eyes.”

“She’s very persuasive,” Garrus huffed.

Shepard rose to her knees to shoot the second asari behind the right armchair and flopped beside Thane. “Not that I don’t adore your complaining, darlings, but perhaps we should focus on the jam we’re in.”

“You didn’t have to be in this jam,” Thane said.

“Neither did you. You’re not investigating this case, you know,” she replied with a smirk.

A bullet slammed into the table with a resounding bang. Shepard clapped her hands over her ears at the reverberation. “Ouch.”

Garrus lifted his chin, looking over the table. “Only three left, two in the living room. It’s the one in the dining room that’s gonna be a problem.”

Thane’s eyes darted around the room as he formed a plan. “You think you can give me a distraction?”

“You got it,” said Garrus. He turned to Shepard. “Ready?”

She kissed Thane’s cheek, then Garrus’s. “Now I am.”

She and Garrus rolled out of cover, firing wildly as they manoeuvred through the living room behind the armchair. “Don’t scratch up that pretty face, honey,” Shepard said as they popped out of cover to fire on the asari behind the opposite armchair.

Thane moved silently through the kitchen as Shepard and Garrus drew fire and snuck up behind the asari in the dining room. The asari in the living room fell backwards, bullets embedded in their foreheads, just as Thane grabbed the woman in front of him, forcing her gun out of her hand and knocking her to the floor.

“You’re getting slow, Krios,” the asari wheezed from the floor, attempting to laugh through a thick, clogged throat.

“Nassana?” Thane whispered with sudden realisation.

“Dahlia’s sister?” Shepard asked aghast as she and Garrus ran over to join Thane.

Garrus held his pistol in Nassana’s face. “Why’d you do it?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said hoarsely.

“Yes, we would,” a nasally salarian voice came from the doorway. They lowered their weapons as three police officers entered the room.

“Well, boys,” Shepard said, draping her arms around Thane and Garrus’s shoulders. “Look’s like the job we weren’t doing here is done. I think this has been an ordeal only five dry martinis will cure.”

“Five won’t split evenly,” Thane pointed out.

“Five for me, darling. You get your own martinis.”

“Punishment for locking you in the bedroom?” Garrus asked with a chuckle.

“I think we’ll settle that one later,” she smiled wickedly at them both.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr at verhexen/avelakjar!


End file.
